Why is my home page ranking much higher than my collection page?

[TZ1982]

Hi everyone,

Why is my client's home page ranking high for a certain keyword phrase rather than a collection page I have which is well optimised for this keyword?

The collection page is on the 10th SERPs page. I did see there were keywords used in the footer of page and the keyword was also used in some intro text on the home page so I removed the keyword from these two places nearly 2 weeks ago and requested google to reindex both the collection page and home page and I've not seen any improvement of the collection page's ranking in SERPs.

I also changed the meta description and meta title as the ctr was poor  but there wasn''t that many impressions either.

It is a competitive keyword organically so maybe the collection page's authority is just not good enough compared to the competitors hence why they are choosing the home page as it has higher page authority however this still is not helpful to searchers who land on home page.

Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to get google to rank the ocllection page higher for the keyword instead of home page?

[TZ1982]

Any ideas on my issue above please?

[TZ1982]

Hi Ross,

I did remove the keyword from the home page 10 days ago and both pages have been indexed since but the collection page is still not being ranked for that keyword even though it's in the meta title, h1 tag, page and meta descriptions. It ranks for other similar keywords but not the one it's focused on but still the home page is ranking for it instead.

Do you have any other ideas of what might cause this?

[RossKernez]

Yes, that's exactly what you want to do. Remove the keywords from meta tags, headings and on-page from your home page.

Ross

[TZ1982]

Hi Ross,

I think I understand you but wouldn't removing the keyword from the homepage where it was in three places be deoptimising that page for the keyword in question?

[RossKernez]

You need to look at the number of backlinks and unique referring domains since referring domains are more important than the number of backlinks. You should look into your Google Search Console as well. It is possible that Ahrefs does not see all your backlinks. You might rank your home page without having any keyword rich hyperlinks/anchor texts. You need to deoptimize your home page and build more links to the collection page to rank collection page .

Ross

[TZ1982]

Hi Ross,

It does have more backlinks than collection page which I think is normal  because it's home page. However, when I looked at backlink profile for the HOMEPAGE URL in Ahrefs it shows there are 519 backlinks directing to home page but if I look at the ones that are tareting the keyword in question there are only 2 backlinks focused on the target keyword that the collection page targets AND  these links are from directory sites which are not good backlinks.

[RossKernez]

Hi there,

Most likely your home page has more backlinks than your collection page. You need to check your backlink profile to see a clear picture of why it is happening.

Ross